1. Field
The present disclosure generally relates to hybrid positioning and more specifically, describes a new method to assess the quality of a set of satellite positioning system (SPS) measurements to be used for hybrid positioning. In order to do so, the disclosure proposes to use variations of clock bias at the receiver side to assess the quality of current set of satellites and their respective range measurements.
2. Description of the Related Art
Positioning using radio signals has attracted increasing attention in the field of location and tracking. The initial research studies on SPS resulted in a Global Positioning System (GPS) which was initially used for military applications and later broadly used for commercial and personal applications as well. The availability of SPS-based positioning has been a major factor in the introduction of Location Based Services (LBS) in advanced mobile communication devices such as smartphones. By determining the position of the receiver, the system is able to provide more effective and more appropriate services to the user.
The Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) operated by the US Government leverages about two-dozen orbiting satellites in medium-earth orbits as reference points. A user equipped with a GPS receiver can estimate his three-dimensional position (latitude, longitude, and altitude) anywhere at any time within several meters of the true location as long as the receiver can see enough of the sky to have four or more satellites “in view.” Cellular carriers can use signals originating from and received at cell towers to determine a user's or a mobile device's location. Assisted GPS (AGPS) is another model that combines both GPS and cellular tower techniques to estimate the locations of mobile users who may be indoors and must cope with attenuation of GPS signals on account of sky blockage. In this model, the cellular network attempts to help a GPS receiver improve its signal reception by transmitting information about the satellite positions, their clock offsets, a precise estimate of the current time, and a rough location of the user based on the location of cell towers. No distinction is made in what follows between GPS and AGPS.
All positioning systems using satellites as reference points are referred to herein as Satellite-based Positioning System (SPS). While GPS is the only operational SPS at this writing, other systems are under development or in planning A Russian system called GLONASS and a European system called Galileo may become operational in the next few years. All such systems are referred to herein as SPS. GPS, GLONASS and Galileo are all based on the same basic idea of trilateration, i.e., estimating a position on the basis of measurements of ranges to the satellites whose positions are known. In each case, the satellites transmit the values of certain parameters which allow the receiver to compute the satellite position at a specific instant. The ranges to satellites from a receiver are measured in terms of the transit times of the signals. These range measurements can contain a common bias due to the lack of synchronization between the satellite and receiver (user device) clocks, and are referred to as pseudoranges. The lack of synchronization between the satellite clock and the receiver (user device) clock can result in a difference between the receiver clock and the satellite clock, which is referred to as internal SPS receiver clock bias or receiver clock bias. In order to estimate a three dimensional position there is a need for four satellites to estimate receiver clock bias along with three dimensional measurements. Additional measurements from each satellite correspond to pseudorange rates in the form of Doppler frequency. References below to raw SPS measurements are intended generally to mean pseudoranges and Doppler frequency measurements. References to SPS data are intended generally to mean data broadcast by the satellites. References to an SPS equation are intended to mean a mathematical equation relating the measurements and data from a satellite to the position and velocity of an SPS receiver.
WLAN-based positioning is a technology which uses WLAN access points to determine the location of mobile users. Metro-wide WLAN-based positioning systems have been explored by several research labs. The most important research efforts in this area have been conducted by the PlaceLab (www.placelab.com, a project sponsored by Microsoft and Intel); the University of California, San Diego ActiveCampus project (ActiveCampus—Sustaining Educational Communities through Mobile Technology, technical report #CS2002-0714); and the MIT campus-wide location system. There is only one commercial metropolitan WLAN-based positioning system in the market at the time of this writing, and it is referred to herein as the WPS (WiFi positioning system) product of Skyhook Wireless, Inc (www.skyhookwireless.com).
SPS is based on triangulation (trilateration) using multiple distance measurements from multiple satellites. The receiver measures its distance from at least four satellites. Based on the distance measurements, the receiver solves a set of quadratic equations including, coordinates of the receiver, and, receiver clock bias. In order to quantify the accuracy of the location estimate (quality of estimate of the reported location,) SPS systems use several metrics such as Dilution of Precision (DOP0). (Indices, like index 0, are used to differentiate different DOP definitions here). Widely used in literature, the geometry of the set of visible satellites, indicated by DOP0 metric, is assumed to have correlation with estimated location error. In other words, DOP0 relates the geometry of the satellites to the quality of the location estimate.
In hybrid positioning, the IEL of the receiver is estimated by using a method other than SPS (such as Wireless Local Area Network-based Positioning System or WLAN-PS). The results are then refined once SPS signals are acquired. In current hybrid positioning systems, a 3-D region is constructed centered on the IEL. The size of this 3-D region is related to the accuracy of the estimated location (IEL). Then the positioning system searches through all the possible locations inside the region and selects the location with minimum SPS receiver clock bias variations (Hybrid positioning systems are disclosed in the following commonly used application, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/479,718, filed Jun. 5, 2009 and entitled “Method and System for Determining Location using a Hybrid Satellite and WLAN Positioning System by Selecting the Best WLAN-PS Solution;” U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/485,588, filed Jun. 16, 2009 and entitled “Method and Systems for Determining Location Using a Cellular and WLAN Positioning System by Selecting the Best WLAN PS Solution;” U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/485,591, filed Jun. 16, 2009 and entitled “Methods and Systems for Determining Location Using a Cellular and WLAN Positioning System by Selecting the Best Cellular Positioning System Solution;” and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/485,595, filed Jun. 16, 2009 and entitled “Methods and Systems for Improving the Accuracy of Expected Error Estimation in Location Determinations Using a Hybrid Cellular and WLAN Positioning System.”). The concept is summarized in FIG. 1, as described below. In current hybrid positioning systems, all visible satellites are used to refine IEL. However, some satellites experience multipath and their range estimates are too inaccurate for use in hybrid positioning. Therefore, there is a need for methods to assess the quality of set of current measurements and detect satellites with erroneous range estimates so the system can remove them from location estimation.
It is also possible for the hybrid positioning system to receive a set of SPS signals which are pointing the system very far from the location obtained in the initial estimate. In such cases, SPS measurements might be consistently close to one another, but the overall SPS result might be very different from initial location. In such cases, there is a need to detect the discrepancies between the IEL and the SPS-refined location estimate.
The current hybrid positioning systems use the location with absolute minimum SPS receiver clock bias variation and neglects all the other locations in the region with similar SPS receiver clock bias characteristics. An optimal result can be achieved if one combines results of all the locations with similar SPS receiver clock biases. In such cases, there is a need for an algorithm to combine such locations and obtain a final location.
The conventional methods perform the task of searching through all three dimensions of the region's grid-locations one by one (referred to as 3D-search) and computing the SPS receiver clock bias for each location and then selecting the point with minimum SPS receiver clock bias variation, as illustrated in FIG. 1. In such cases, there is a need for an algorithm to perform a faster search and obtain the final location faster.